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That god forbid, that made me first your slave,I should in thought control your times of pleasure,Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!O! let me suffer, being at your beck,The imprison'd absence of your liberty;And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,Without accusing you of injury. Be where you list, your charter is so strongThat you yourself may privilege your timeTo what you will; to you it doth belongYourself to pardon of self-doing crime.I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

A continuation of the argument of the previous sonnet. The poet accepts the right of the young man to be free and fulfill his own pleasure, and submits with all the humility of a vassal before his liege lord. But here again we are forced to read the words in their opposite sense, and to come round to the view that the youth does not have the rights and privileges that the poet bestows on him. As with all love there is giving and receiving, and the standard of love that the speaker sets himself is so high that it involves total self-abnegation. At the end of the poem the struggle is almost abandoned, and the frank confession is made that he will abide the return of the loved one, though it be an absolute hell of waiting, and he will do his best to avoid blame and censure of the youth, (but probably will not succeed).

The 1609 Quarto Version

THat God forbid, that made me firſt your ſlaue,
I ſhould in thought controule your times of pleaſure,
Or at your hand th' account of houres to craue,
Being your vaſſail, bound to ſtaie your leiſure.
Oh let me ſuffer( being at your beck)
Th' impriſon'd abſence of your libertie,
And patience tame,to ſufferance bide each check,
Without accuſing you of iniury.
Be where you liſt,your charter is ſo ſtrong,
That you your ſelfe may priuiledge your time
To what you will,to you it doth belong,
Your ſelfe to pardon of ſelfe-doing crime.
I am to waite,though waiting ſo be hell,
Not blame your pleaſure be it ill or well.

Commentary

1. That god forbid, that made me first your slave,

That god forbid - may be read in two
ways, as a pious wish 'may that God forbid etc.', or with forbid
as
the old form of the past tense of forbid 'that God forbade me (long
ago)
etc.'. The God was presumably the God or Goddess of love, Eros, or
Cupid,
or Venus, depending on which section of mythology the poet wished to
appeal
to.

2. I should in thought control your times of pleasure,

control
= influence; restrict, overpower.
The proximity of account in the next line suggests
an earlier meaning
of 'to check accounts' (OED.v.1.) However Shakespeare nowhere else uses
it in that sense. Cf. Sonn.66: And folly doctor-like
controlling skill.
your times of pleasure = the time that you devote to
pleasure. Although
the phrase has the rather bland meaning of 'how you please to amuse
yourself',
there is undoubtedly the dark cloud hanging over it of 'the time you
spend
in dissipation and sexual infidelity'.

3. Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,

at
your hand = in your hand writing;
directly from you, from your hand. the account of hours an account of how you
spend your time. Here
there is probably a pun intended with whores for houres
and
a cunt for account.
to crave - to request; earnestly desire to have. (That God
forbid) that
I should crave. The word is often used when associated with servility.
As
in:
I then crave pardon of your Majesty. 3H6.IV.6.8.
Humbly on my knee / I crave your blessing R3.II.2.105-6.

4. Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!

your vassal - your slave. A vassal
was a term appropriate to feudalism, when the Lord owned his slaves or
vassals.
It was less in evidence in Elizabethan times, although land ownership
often
resulted in the keeping of large numbers of retainers, or servants. The
absolute power of the feudal lord over his vassal, though still
remembered,
was very much a thing of the past. Generally it had been superceded by
other
more modern forms of economic dependence.

bound - used
here in the legal sense of having certain inalienable duties to
perform.
to stay your leisure = to await the commands
which you choose to
give when it pleases you (at your leisure). to stay =
to await.

5. O! let me suffer, being at your beck,

suffer
= endure. With further meaning
of 'be subjected to pain'.

being at
your beck -
being at your command. to beck was to give a mute
command by a gesture.
It is cognate with the word 'beckon'. See the following examples:

Ah, know you
not the city favours them,
And they have troops of soldiers at their beck?
3H6.I.1.67-8.
.......O'er my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knew'st, and that
Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me. AC.III.11.58-61.I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more
offences at my beck
than I have thoughts to put them in Ham.III.1.124-5. Look how thy servants do attend on thee,
Each in his office ready at thy beck. TS.Ind.2.31-2.

The phrase 'to be at
the beck and call of' OED
does not record earlier than 1875. Wyatt's famous poem Madam,
withouten
many words uses the expression : And with a beck
ye shall me call.
See Wyatt's miscellaneous poems.

6. The imprison'd absence of your liberty;

Although the meaning is fairly clear, the
grammar of these two lines (6-7) defies analysis. The meaning of this
(including
the above line) is approximately 'Let me endure, since I am at your
command,
the self imprisonment that falls on me due to your absence, and as a
result
of your enjoyment of your own liberty'. As SB points out, absence
cannot
be imprisoned, so a logical reading of this line is hardly possible. It
is the necessity of conveying the ideas in a limited space that creates
the compression of thought. Imprisonment calls up the opposite idea of
liberty,
which the youth enjoys. But the pain and suffering is caused by the
loved
one's absence and infidelity, which metaphorically imprisons the poet
in
the dark world of his own tortured reflections. Liberty also
carries
the idea of wantonness and libertinism,
which is at the forefront
of the poet's mind.

7. And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,

Several
interpretations are suggested of
this line, which all tend in the same direction because of the basic
meaning
of the words. The general sense is probably 'And in addition my
patience
will school itself to permit your charter, and I will endure each
restraint
you impose on me'. However the meaning may be altered depending on how
one
reads tame to sufferance, and to a lesser extent on
how the line
is punctuated. tame could be taken as a verb
governing patience,
or as an adjective, or as connected directly to patience giving the
hyphenated
adjective patience-tame. sufferance may
be the undergoing
of pain, or the granting of permission, the latter meaning being
brought
more to the forefront because of the legal language connected with charter
which follows. Another likely interpretation is therefore 'And having
patience,
which is mild and schooled to endure suffering, [I will] put up with
each
restraint [which you impose] without etc.' bide each check = endure each restraint. bide
is now only
used in the phrase to bide one's time. Here it
means to endure, or
to put up with. As in :
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm. KLIII.4.28-9.

check = restraint on one's liberty, an obstruction, a
rebuff, a military
repulse.
Perforce against all checks, rebukes, and manners,
I must advance the colours of my love MW.III.4.79-80.
The word seems originally to come from the game of chess and putting a
king
'in check', and from military usage.

8. Without accusing you of injury.

accusing - this introduces the legal
terminology of the next four lines. Apart from his determination to
endure
patiently all wrongs (which are not wrongs) the poet will not accuse
the
youth of mental cruelty for the reasons which follow.

9. Be where you list, your charter is so strong

where
you list = wherever you desire
to be. to list is an obsolete verb, meaning to
desire or to wish.
(OED.v.(1). 2.b.) It is more often used in an impersonal construction,
as
in 'wheresoever it listeth him to go' meaning 'wherever he wishes to
go'.
charter = a legal document, a permit granted
by the appropriate authorities.
The word originally meant a leaf of paper, and by transference came to
mean
the legal document written on that paper or parchment. The Great
Charter
is a term used for the Magna Carta signed by King
John in 1215 at
Runnymede, defining the rights and privileges of the barons.
Shakespeare
uses the word in connection with privilege in Richard III. Then, taking him from thence that is not there,
You break no privilege nor charter there. R3.III.1.53-4.

10. That you yourself may privilege your time

privilege
your time = grant to
your own free time the privilege to do what it chooses. Thus, grant
freedom
to yourself to do as you will when you choose. Shakespeare uses the
word
privilege as a verb three times in all:

...he took
this place for sanctuary,
And it shall privilege him from your hands
CE.V.1.94-5.

To
what you will = to do as you please
(with your time). 'What You Will' is the secondary title of 'Twelfth
Night',
and there may be some hidden connection. will - here,
as elsewhere,
is suggestive of sexual desire and license, and given the surrounding
references
to liberty, charter, privilege and self-doing crime it inevitably bears
that secondary meaning.

12. Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.

A strong
charter would no doubt make
a baron or Lord unassailable in the courts, and he would be in a
position
to pardon himself of any and every crime. In reality the hearing would
not
even reach the courts and the pardon would be granted before the
summons
was drawn up.

13. I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,

I
am to wait = I must wait, I must
attend upon your wishes. though waiting so be hell
= though waiting
is such hell. The unusual construction also allows the meaning 'though
waiting
in these conditions is such hell'.

14. Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

blame
= reproach, rebuke; accuse.
Cf. :
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest Sonn.40.
your pleasure - the word pleasure is
innocent enough in isolation,
but the suggestion that it might be ill, i.e. evil,
no good, illicit
and a sexual betrayal is enough to condemn it.